


Auld Lang Syne

by azhdarchidaen



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who (Comics), Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 17:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3077228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azhdarchidaen/pseuds/azhdarchidaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Lang Syne

_We two have paddled in the stream,_  
 _from morning sun till dine;_  
 _But seas between us broad have roared  
_ _since auld lang syne._

* * *

 

“Grace, this is Sam!” the Doctor says the first time he shows up on her doorstep, all velvet and chestnut hair and grins, looking not a bit different from when he left her in the rain on New Year’s Eve.

And the blonde teen he’s brought with him is good company -- chatting with her as she prepares the coffee she just insisted she’d make for them all. Laughing with her when she makes an offhand comment about needing to give the Doctor decaf.

But the best part of it is him -- knowing she hasn’t been forgotten and brushed aside for the fact that her definition of “adventure” involves a tad less planet-hopping.

It feels good.

***

“Grace, this is Izzy!” she hears when he reappears a month later, although she isn’t so sure it’s been a month for him. But he’s back and she doesn’t care -- some time-shifting is to be expected, with the Doctor, and she’s perfectly happy with it as long as he shows up in an order that won’t break her brain. She’s happy he’s showing up at all.

And she’s happy that they talk -- her about her new job, to which the Doctor tries very hard to listen intently (she can tell he’s getting distracted by things that don’t interest him); the Doctor about the latest series of adventures he’s bursting to share with someone, and interjections by Izzy to keep his commentary on track (she can tell he’s getting distracted by things that _do_ interest him).

It feels weirdly normal.

***

“Grace, this is Fitz!” the Doctor says cheerfully the next time, and sure enough, the companion has changed.

And Grace starts to wonder if maybe those couple of kisses under the stars don’t earn her the title of “most… involved” anymore, because the man with the Doctor -- lanky, nearly a foot taller than the alien, and looking like he needs a shave (...but not in a bad way, she thinks absentmindedly before banishing the thought) -- blushes and looks down at his toes in way she doesn’t think is normal for him.

She resolves to ask him about it later, after coffee’s been pulled out for three and she’s been regaled with commentary on what the two of them have been up to this time around.

“So are you and him…?” she eventually starts, when Fitz has cleared out to do something she hadn’t caught and she’s left alone with her friend.

“Traveling?” the Doctor suggests, “Oh yes, but we can stick around a bit longer, if you like.”

“No no no, I mean… together?”

The Doctor cocks his head in confusion. “Well, yes, of course, but I don’t see why you--”

Grace puts a hand up. “You don’t need to explain it,” she says. “I got it. The way he looks at you, I can tell. Like he’d... jump in front of a bus for you or… something.”

The Doctor nods in slow agreement, but still looks confused. “You know, you seem remarkably calm about that…”

“Doctor, I live in San Francisco.”

He looks alarmed. “...Do people jump in front of buses frequently here?”

It’s then that Grace decides she hasn’t got the faintest idea whether or not something’s going on between them. And for the record, that Fitz probably doesn’t either.

And it feels right.

***

“Grace this is Charley!” he says, dragging a young blonde behind him and grinning. “Charley, Grace!”

Grace makes an offhand joke about the number of Brits he’s showed up with, only to learn that his friend this time around isn’t from this _time_ at all. It boggles her mind a little, she won’t lie. But it’s just another facet of being friends with the Doctor that she hadn’t thought about. She wonders -- if she’d traveled with him after all, would she have been the Charley? Would he have taken her to 2100-something, where they’d be shocked by someone from practically ancient history? Or maybe it’d have been the other way around. They’d go back in time, and she’d be the mystery woman from the future.

Funny to think that your present was someone’s future. And someone else’s past. And probably all of the above to people like the Doctor.

....Not that there were many people like the Doctor.

And all this was something she’d just stumbled into?

It feels complicated.

***

“Grace, this is Lucie!”

And Lucie it is -- not like anybody before her. Grace can’t help but be amazed by the variety of people he picks up and befriends. Not just the times and places, but the personalities. Because Lucie seems like the sort of person she’d meet and talk with just for fun -- the kind of friend she’d find on her own. But maybe not who she thought the Doctor would.

In any case, it’s an excellent visit. They spent most of the time laughing. Of course, “they” meaning some of it’s taken at the Doctor’s expense. But to his credit he takes it gracefully. Grace assumes he must be acclimatizing to it, with Lucie onboard.

It feels fun.

***

Grace thinks to herself that she shouldn’t have been surprised when the visits stopped. She’d been lucky enough that an alien who dashed about the universe, holding back death, had thought her important enough to even stop by to visit again. Of course it wouldn’t last.

But a tiny part of her wishes that another person… alien, whatever… was still popping in. That one of the constants she’d enjoyed so much had stuck around and kept making her feel just a little bit more important. A little bit more… special.

The months drag on, and start to become years, and she accepts that they’re going to keep doing so. And yet she can’t help but wonder, in the little part of her mind that insists she was important, she was special -- at least, a little bit -- why. _Why_ did the Doctor stop showing up? _Why_ did he stop dragging new companions to met her, grinning like an idiot and stealing her best coffee and eating every cookie in the house, before dashing off to go have space adventures?

Did she do something wrong? Did he get himself in some mess he couldn’t get out of? God, she hopes it’s not the latter. As much as it hurts to think she could have lost her special-ness, she’d take that over something happening to the Doctor any day.

And so as time drags on, she decides that must be what happened. It’s not what she wants at all, but assuming it’s her fault is still the least painful option. And maybe it means _Madame Butterfly_ gets played a lot less often, and some other little things, but they’re just that. Little. And unimportant.

Just like she must have turned out to be, in the end.

Or something like that.

So it comes as a surprise when someone she doesn’t recognize shows up on her doorstep again -- not that she ever didn’t recognize the Doctor, but his friends were usually a mystery. And the last strangers she remembers knocking on her door. Until today.

“Dr. Holloway?” the young man standing in the doorframe says, grinning lopsidedly as soon as he sees her. Everything about him seems lopsided, really -- from his awkward, lanky appearance, to his bow-tie that appears to be trying to escape its hold on his shirt.

 _British accent_ , she notes, confused as ever. Maybe he’s one of the interns the hospital has been trying to work with, although she doesn’t know why that would earn him her address.

“Yeah,” she says. “Can I help you?”

His smile widens even further. “Grace!”

“...Yeah, that’s me,” she says. Still weird, getting weirder.

He snaps his fingers as he hits his head of floppy hair with his hand. “The _face_ ,” he mutters. “The face the face the _face_.”

She eyes him carefully, starting to wonder if she should be worried about… something.

He looks her in the eyes though, grin still plastered across his face. “Grace!” he says. “Jelly-babies-shoes-fireworks-beryllium-Dr-Bowman-New-Year’s-Master-Eye-of-Harmony _Grace_.”

Her eyes widen. It can’t be…

“Grace,” he says, “this is… _me_.”

She puts her hands up to her face and breathes in deeply. Because oh my god... oh my _god_ \-- she’d assumed he’d never be back and here he is, grinning and floppy and looking so young and… and different and that must mean…

“What did you _do_ , Doctor?” she says. “What the hell did you _do_?”

He opens his mouth and she cuts him off.

“I want to imagine it wasn’t as stupid as a surgeon stabbing one of your hearts this time,” she says.

Despite her humor, his face goes grim.

“I did lots of things. And then I did lots of things. And then I did lots more things and… and then I did other… thing-y.... things.”

“...I don’t understand.”

“I’m not the one after, Grace,” he says. “I’m not the one after, or the one after that, or… or even the one after that.”

Her mouth opens because she wants to say something and what do you even say to that? But he puts a finger to his lips.

“I stayed away,” he says slowly, “Because I wanted to forget." "

"Funny that! You’d think the forgetting bit would be easy, with that face. Awful lot of forgetting and then… and then the end involved so much _remembering_. And I just kept remembering and remembering and _remembering_ no matter how hard I wanted not to. The curse of the face that started life not-remembering: remembering and remembering forever.”

“Remembering _what_?” Grace asks. Because if he’s here, if he’s showed up for real, the answer can’t be her -- like she’s been assuming all this time.

He frowns. “Remembering everything I lost,” he said. “And my responsibility for losing it.”

“And staying away helped you with that?” she says. It’s more than a little accusatory -- and she doesn’t really care.

“Running's what I do best, Grace. You know that.”

“ _Saving_ people’s what you do best,” she says defiantly. “Holding back death.”

And now his face looks so dark that she wants to bite her tongue.

“And when I don’t?” he says. “When I _don’t_ save them and when it goes all _wrong_?

She looks him in the eye. “When it all goes wrong, it just means you don’t know what’s going to happen next. Take it from someone who lost a patient that started _walking around the next day with a different face_.”

He gives her a little smile.

“...So what made you stop running?” she says quietly.

He looks at her very seriously. “Nothing can stop that -- but I’ve decided to stop with all the forgetting.”

“Care to share why?”

“It involved three of me and a fez. Besides, wasn’t working anyways. But that’s not important.”

Grace just laughs. “Well, if you don’t feel so philosophical at the moment, I can offer you the usual. I think there’s some catching up to do.”

He smiles widely again. “No decaf?”

And suddenly they’re hugging, probably looking like idiots on her doorstep. And there might be some tears on her part, and she thinks there probably aren’t on his, and she suddenly remembers that she’d meant to put coffee on the shopping list the other day and is probably going to have to get a little creative.

And it feels _amazing_.

* * *

_And there’s a hand my trusty friend!_   
_And give me a hand o’ thine!_   
_And we’ll take a right good-will draught,_   
_for auld lang syne._


End file.
